Will sight-unseen vs. sight-seen pricing be turned on its head, and is that a bad thing?

Longacre

Everyone knows that I love the plastic. Coins should be encapsulated at the earliest opportunity, not only to protect the coins themselves, but also to provide a mechanism for the sight-unseen market.

Up until this time, we have had two markets that worked in parallel-- the sight-seen market and the sight-unseen market. To my knowledge, these markets worked well. There is a certain bid price for sight-unseen coins, which is presumably lower than a potential bid price for sight-seen coins. This difference in price allows for the free flow of coins between a buyer and seller and a more liquid market for all coins.

However, with the advent of stickers, I assume that there is no longer a difference between the sight-seen market and the sight-unseen market. The placing of that little sticker now makes all stickered coins equal, and therefore, there is no need for a discounted price for sight-unseen coins. All stickered coins are created equal, and no one stickered coin is more equal than another.

What impact will this destruction of the sight-seen/sight-unseen market have on coins that are merely raw slabbed? Will it cause a larger spread between the prices of sight-unseen raw slabbed coins versus sight-seen raw slabbed coins? I would think that as more and more stickers enter the market, the “spread” on the raw slabbed coins will get larger, as buyers and sellers may be reluctant to keep spreads relatively tight on raw slabbed coins. This might lead to a deterioration of prices overall for raw slabbed coins, while creating a sort of invisible support for stickered coins that don’t have to deal with the sight-seen/sight-unseen dichotomy in pricing.

Have we created a monster in our numismatic world which is clearly just a hobby?

Cladiator

I constantly hear and read people ridicule other people for being so foolish to bid on any coin that they have not personally seen in hand. Even if the auction had photos often times folks still slam others for bidding without looking at the coin in person.

So......

Why do I hear all this crap about a sight-unseen market all the time?

Which is it? Buy sight unseen and trust the TPG's and new fangeled stickers blindly or only buy if you can inspect the coin?



<< <i>The placing of that little sticker now makes all stickered coins equal, and therefore, there is no need for a discounted price for sight-unseen coins. >>

I would not agree with that.

TahoeDale

You are assuming that the number of coins to be stickered will be a large portion of the market- if it is, that will be years from now.

And the assumption that all stickered coins will be equal is unrealistic.

And that a large majority of buyers and sellers will rely on the product for their inventory(sellers) or their collections(buyers).

All of the above is without merit, at least at this time.

RYK

I constantly hear and read people ridicule other people for being so foolish to bid on any coin that they have not personally seen in hand. Even if the auction had photos often times folks still slam others for bidding without looking at the coin in person.

So......

Why do I hear all this crap about a sight-unseen market all the time?

The sight-unseen market is for dealers and investors, not collectors. Sticker or no sticker.

Cladiator

<< <i>I constantly hear and read people ridicule other people for being so foolish to bid on any coin that they have not personally seen in hand. Even if the auction had photos often times folks still slam others for bidding without looking at the coin in person.

So......

Why do I hear all this crap about a sight-unseen market all the time?

The sight-unseen market is for dealers and investors, not collectors. Sticker or no sticker. >>

Ah. Sorry. I'll promptly butt out of the conversation then as I'm only a mere collector.

RYK

<< <i>

<< <i>I constantly hear and read people ridicule other people for being so foolish to bid on any coin that they have not personally seen in hand. Even if the auction had photos often times folks still slam others for bidding without looking at the coin in person.

So......

Why do I hear all this crap about a sight-unseen market all the time?

The sight-unseen market is for dealers and investors, not collectors. Sticker or no sticker. >>

Ah. Sorry. I'll promptly butt out of the conversation then as I'm only a mere collector.

>>



Me, too, as a mere former collector.

Edit: Or maybe a former mere collector.

Unknown

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Longacre

Well this is pretty spooky-- I literally just got a call from John Albanese himself and we talked briefly about my question.

sTONER

<< <i>Well this is pretty spooky-- I literally just got a call from John Albanese himself and we talked briefly about my question. >>

,, HE,S a good man and a NO B.S. type of guy,,

Smittys

<< <i>Well this is pretty spooky-- I literally just got a call from John Albanese himself and we talked briefly about my question. >>



Inquiring minds would like a recap..................

ricko

Buy the 'seen' coin, not the plastic, not the sticker - a sticker is just another opinion.... and, like anal apertures, we all have one. Cheers, RickO

rjsriv

Heres My 2 cents:

It really chaps my A$$ when a dealer who has the coin IN HAND and pulls the Blue sheet. I WONDER how many of them know that the BLUESHEET is for SIGHT UNSEEN coins which usually are the DREGS of the Grade!!. When I see a DEALER try to Pull this crap. I remind them that the BLUESHEET is for SIGHT UNSEEN.
Then you really find who wants to deal and who are ripoff artists.

fc

the recap is this:

i am going to make a ton of money off insecure folks
and dealers who wish to make money off insecure folks.

291fifth

I expect a division to arise very quickly between "ordinary" stickered coins and "exceptional" stickered coins. The top end of the coin market (and that is where the stickers will dwell) is about money. The top end of the coin market will continue to be divided, in terms of price, as long as there is another dollar to be made.

What I expect the reality will be is:

An example based on MS65:

MS65.0 through MS65.3 will not get a sticker.

MS65.4 through MS65.7 will get a sticker but will eventually be considered to be ordinary stickered coins.

MS65.8 and MS65.9 will get a sticker but will command an additional premium "because it is so nice and has such great eye-appeal."

In the upper reaches of numismatics, money talks.

Arizonadesertrat

It's hard to view numismatics as 'just' a hobby---if I were only spending $3-5K per year, it would simply be a hobby and my pricing concerns would be irrelevant. I think that most people who routinely buy $1,000+ coins presume that they are buying things that have a persistent value (ideally one that at least keeps up with inflation). There are coins that I will never sell, but my heirs will likely think otherwise.

There are already monsters in the room, and DBD is not going to be a simple fix for much that ails the business end of numismatics. There will still be debates concerning a 0.3 difference in grade translating to a large price difference. There will almost surely still be AT coins that get by BOTH layers of TPG's (and the s**t will hit the fan when the first of these doctored, stickered coins surfaces). And a sticker with a fancy monogram isn't going to guarantee that a coin will turn out to be a financial winner. I travel a lot to business meetings out of state (AZ), and frequently take a couple of hours while away to visit B&M dealers. I still see coins with altered surfaces in dealer showcases, frequently with no notation on the holders of problems. I subscribe to Coin World and Numismatic News, so every week I am treated to full-page ads chock full of rotten coins (overgraded, cleaned, polished, etc.), and many of us veteran collectors know who these dealers are. There are plenty of dealers who try to rip-off heirs of coin collectors with low-ball offers. Some days I am so disgusted with what is going on, that I consider leaving the hobby again. Yet here I still am, hopelessly addicted.

A lot of the controversy that has people with their knickers in a knot has been fueled by personality clashes. This new grade verification entity isn't really going to impact the typical coin collector (who frequently buys cheaper raw coins and rarely buys anything over $400 or so)---it's about facilitating dealer-to-dealer transactions. Will higher-end collectors benefit from this? A warm blanket and a glass of milk are nice, so are additional opinions (where DBD comes in), but not substitutes for a collector doing his homework. The only thing that will protect collectors are knowledge (learning to grade), self-control (minimizing impulse-buying), and lots of patience.

Some people are worried that the appearance of stickered coins will trigger a run-away increase in coin prices, citing the events surrounding the advent of TPG's. I don't think that this will happen because we have some knowledge of numbers of particular coins that have survived (population reports). High-end, stickered coins will not automatically become desirable and 'hot'----generics will still be viewed as such, classic commemoratives from the 1920's-1930's will still mostly be in the dumpster, etc.

Will DBD make a significant impact on the industry? NO